I will be making my usual donation to Poppy Scotland – as in so many things Scotland is different and does its own thing.
The Scottish four-petal poppy without a leaf is different from the two-petal English one with leaf. I will not be wearing one openly. If people choose to read that as me not caring that is up to them, but they would be wrong; I'm not inclined to wear my heart on my sleeve. If for any reason I am called upon to attend a formal ceremony,I will wear intertwined red and white ceremonies.
Mine is not a service family. My father wanted to enlist in the RAF in the war – he'd been a member of the Air Defence Cadet Corps – but was not allowed to enlist as he was an essential worker, a draughtsman in a naval shipyard, so he saw out the war with the Home Guard. His older brother, my uncle Charlie, went to Burma with the Lancashire Fusiliers and was killed very soon after arriving. My father was made to feel guilty about that.